Hi all. I plan to begin working on the video in earnest in March, conditional on current projects being completed before then. A very conservative delivery estimate: It will be published before the end of 2013--but as soon as possible, i'd like to have it finished considerably earlier than that. There will be no formal progress log but I'll very likely post some stills of the WIP at the George Ought to Help facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/George-Ought-to-Help/140530049349446 this page currently shows production stills from the 3rd animation in the George Ought to Help series that I'm working on right now.

Apologies for not being able to give more concrete information, and thanks in advance for your understanding!

Hi all. There are a couple of things I need to arrange with donators to the video project. Unfortunately their details aren't available from bitcoinstarter.com right now and there are a couple of users I've not yet been able to track down via other sites.

If you're a donator and your bitcoinstarter username begins with any of the following letter combinations could you get in touch with me at info at redshiftmedia dot com with the subject line 'Donator' (or reply here if you prefer), Please mention your bitcoinstarter username and the amount you pledged if you can remember.

I have a first draft of the script, and I'd like your help improving it.

The aim is to provide the motivated layperson viewer with a decent grasp of the two main ideas behind the technical design of Bitcoin. It's aimed at viewers who might find the 'What is Bitcoin?' video too superficial, but for whom the Khan academy's series is too dry and technical.

After watching the video, a viewer in this target group should feel as though they have enough of a grasp of how Bitcoin is put together to understand why tech people are excited about it--that they no longer have to feel as though they need to take the word of the enthusiasts on faith.

The two main ideas it attempts to explain are cryptographically signed transactions and decentralised stabilizing consensus.

Any comments most welcome (NB. I will not act on all suggestions, but they're all welcome all the same).

In 2008 an anonymous person or group of people going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a paper describing the design of a digital currency called Bitcoin. Programmers wrote software that used the protocol Nakamoto described, and more and more people started buying and selling things using Bitcoin.

To this:

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In 2008 an anonymous person or group of people going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a paper describing the design of a digital currency called Bitcoin. On January 3rd, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin client which used the protocol described in the white paper, and very soon, people started running the software on their computer and buying and selling things using Bitcoin.

I would change the "Satoshi's" here:

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And each Bitcoin is divisible into a hundred million atomic units, called Satoshi’s.

Near the "Proof of work" section, I think it is important to include some details of the rule that limits production of monetary units. It is a feedback look that requires looking back ~2000 blocks and determining the date. If the date is greater than 2 weeks, the work is made easier. If the date is less than 2 weeks, the work is made harder. This controls the rate at which the blocks are created, and thus, the amount of new currency generated.

Another rule in the feedback loop is the reward value. The block reward starts off at 50 bitcoins and divides in half every 210,000 blocks. This is what limits the monetary units to 21,000,000 bitcoins.

Great work. I did some pruning. The main goal being to reduce syllable count so people don't get lost mid sentence. Obviously take or leave whatever you want. I only got through the first half so far.

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BackstoryIn 2008 an anonymous person or group of people going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a paper describing the design of a digital currency called Bitcoin. On In January 3rd, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin client which used the new protocol described in the white paper, and very soon, people started running the software on their computer and buying and selling things using Bitcointhe first real-world transaction occurred (the famous million dollar Pizza).Bitcoin factsIf you’ve heard about Bitcoin you’ll probably already know that the price of Bitcoins has been increasing quickly over the last year or sorapidly, and that it’sis volatile.

You’ll probably know that Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer system so itthat doesn't require any trust to be placed in a central authority. There are no servers to hack, no databases containing sensitive information that can be leaked. And there’s no one in control who governments and other powerful parties can strong-arm to get their way.You might have understood that you don’t need anyone’sNo permissionis required to start using Bitcoin, there are no forms to fill in. Anyone with a computer, an internet connection, and some free software, anywhere in the world can start accepting (and then sending)use Bitcoins.One other well known fact is that the maximum number of Bitcoins that can ever exist is slightly lessHard-wired into the software are rules ensuring there can never be more than 21 Million Bitcoins. The rate that new coins are created is known in advance. This means that unlike fiat currencies issued by governments, no one has the ability to deliberately inflate the supply of, confiscate, or block Bitcoins payments.The meaning of BitcoinThe word Bitcoin refers to twodifferent things.The currency (unit of account) and the payment system that enables transactions.A Bitcoin is a unit of account, analogous to a Euro or a Dollar. There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins in the world, and each Bitcoin is divisible into a hundred million atomic units, called Satoshis.Note that the software will happily send a small fraction of a bitcoin to any recipient, so an economy "running out" is never an issue with bitcoin.Bitcoin is also used to refer to a public protocol.When refering toTthe protocol. It can be thought of as a set of rules for how pieces of software--known as Bitcoin clients--must communicate with each other. A bitcoin client allows a person to send and receive Bitcoins. The clients work by sending messages to one another. If the messages passed between clients stick to the rules of the protocol, they’re forwarded on, spreading throughout the network.Collectively we’ll call all these things the Bitcoin system. We’re going to look at the fundamental ideas behind how the Bitcoin system works.Transactions and addressesBitcoins, and satoshis, are not reallyPhysical coins of course, but they’re not files on a computer either. They’re really numbers in a ledger. The bitcoin system uses a public ledger called the blockchain. The blockchainThis contains a record of every Bitcoin transaction that has ever happened. The system operates similar to a Land Registry that determines who owns which piece of real-estate.You can think of a transaction in the blockchain as a record that a certain amount of Bitcoins were sent from one Bitcoin address to another.A Bitcoin address looks like this: 1K3p8wnV6bjGEk3ShyKxeiMBrCTTRQA4YE (Don't worry, all common bitcoin software checks for typos!)One person can have access to many Bitcoin addresses. In fact it's common to use a new address for each payment, it's free and helps maintain privacy. To make a Bitcoin payment to someone, you need to know an address of theirs.At any moment,yYour Bitcoin balance is the combined total of all the Bitcoins assigned to addresses under your control. Bitcoin clients typically download the blockchain and scan the transaction history for you to figure out what your current Bitcoin balance is by checking the flow of funds into (and out of) all the addresses under your control. When a user sends Bitcoins to an address, behind the scenes his client creates a transaction , adds a digital signature and broadcasts it to the rest of the network for verification.Sending moneySo what stops a person from maliciously creating and broadcasting a transaction that sends Bitcoins from someone elses address, to one of his own?Bitcoin addresses are designed to be publicWe know that each Bitcoin user has many addresses. What this really means is that the user has the power to re-assign the funds at those addresses to any other valid Bitcoin address, in other words, they have the power to spend theose funds stored at those addresses.Bitcoin addresses are designed to be public. People share them with others to request payment. Addresses might be publishedAccepting bitcoin payments is as simple as publishing an address on forums, on websites, or on printed material. Scanable barcodes (often on a phone screen) can help save typing too. Knowing a bitcoin address is enough information to send funds to it, but it’s not enough information todoes not allow sending funds from that address anywhere else.The reason you can’t send other people’s money to yourselfbehind this is that Bitcoin transactions must be prepared in a special way before they’re sent: they’re cryptographically signed.Public key cryptographyA Bitcoin address is really a short representation ofs a code known as a public key. Each public key has an unique accompanying code called a private key. Bitcoin addresses (and the public keys they’re derived from) can safely be displayed to the world, but their corresponding private keys need to be kept secret. This is important because knowing a private key allows a person to spend the funds attached to the corresponding Bitcoin address.By the way: Most of the time Bitcoin users don’t need to worry about this complexity because their Bitcoin clients automatically keep track of their receiving addresses, as well as their public and private keys. Typically a Bitcoin client stores all this information in an important file known as a Bitcoin wallet. This is the file that should be password protected and backed up in case of computer failure

For my understanding: would it be accurate to say that it's thanks to clients verifying block solutions in accordance with the Bitcoin protocol that we can be sure that it actually does become harder to solve blocks when network hashing power increases?

Quote from: Tuxavant

Another rule in the feedback loop is the reward value. The block reward starts off at 50 bitcoins and divides in half every 210,000 blocks.

Similar question: would it be accurate to say that it's thanks to clients verifying block solutions in accordance with the Bitcoin protocol, that we can be sure that the block reward will actually decrease over time?

That sounds about right. The difficulty and reward values are all calculations based on each client's perception of data in the blockchain. Because they all follow the same rules of interpretation, they all come up with the same changes to reward and difficulty that must then be used later on.